Texas Has No Heat Rule, and Your Crew Still Pays for the Heat

Nobody in Texas is required to give your crew a water break. Their bodies still need one.

That gap, between what the law asks and what a person needs at 3 p.m. in August, is where an employer either builds a heat plan or finds out what going without one costs. Most of the conversation treats heat as a compliance question. It is also a staffing question. A crew that is spent by noon builds less, and a new hire who has a brutal first week may not come back for a second.

How dangerous is heat for construction workers?

The CPWR data bulletin from August 2025 puts it plainly: construction workers are about 7% of the workforce but account for more than one-third of occupational heat-related deaths. In 2023, using Bureau of Labor Statistics fatality data, construction made up 34.0% of fatal heat injuries (18 deaths), more than any other industry. The rate in construction was nearly four times higher than all other industries: 0.15 versus 0.04 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers.

Read those numbers with their limits in mind. CPWR notes that industry was suppressed or missing for more than one in four heat deaths in 2023, and that for construction in 2023 it had to use the primary source to estimate heat injuries because event data was missing. The counts are small, so they swing: construction recorded 11 heat deaths in 2018, 21 in 2020, and 18 in 2023. An older BLS analysis found 144 workers, or 41.9%, who died from environmental heat from 2011 through 2019 while engaged in construction, repair, or cleaning. That is a broader category than the construction industry alone, so do not stack the two figures.

Where does Texas fit?

At the top of the list. Using CPWR’s own Fatality Map, the bulletin counts 25 construction heat deaths in Texas from 2011 to 2023, the most of any state, ahead of California with 13 and Florida with 9. Part of that is size: CPWR points out those three states also have the highest construction employment. Even so, Texas’s rate of 0.16 per 100,000 full-time equivalents is well above California’s and Florida’s at 0.09 each. The bulletin also finds July the deadliest month, and June, July, and August together account for 71.4% of the 126 construction heat deaths in the map. Note that the map is CPWR’s compilation, not a government census, and CPWR cautions that heat illness is widely undercounted.

Does Texas have a heat standard?

No. Inside Climate News reports that Texas, like most states, has no regulations requiring water breaks or other worker heat protections, and that bills to create a statewide standard have failed. Texas also has no OSHA state plan, so federal OSHA applies.

For a few years, two cities filled the gap. Austin and Dallas had ordinances requiring rest breaks within city limits. Then House Bill 2127, signed in June 2023 and effective September 1, 2023, brought state preemption of municipal and county regulation. According to Inside Climate News, it overturned those ordinances and blocked other cities from adopting similar rules.

What remains is federal. OSHA has no heat-specific standard in force, so it relies on the General Duty Clause, which, in OSHA’s words, requires employers to provide a place of employment that “is free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious harm to employees.” OSHA’s heat page also lists a National Emphasis Program directive dated April 10, 2026. I did not read the directive itself, so check its terms, but it shows enforcement attention to heat has not waited on the rule.

What is the status of the federal heat rule?

Pending. As of today, November 4, 2026, OSHA’s rulemaking page lists no final rule. Here is what it does record:

• The proposed rule was published in the Federal Register on August 30, 2024.
• The public comment period closed January 14, 2025.
• The informal hearing ran June 16 through July 2, 2025.
• The post-hearing comment period, for those who filed a notice of intention to appear, ended October 30, 2025.

The proposal would apply to all employers conducting outdoor and indoor work, including construction. I could not find an announced date for a final rule, and the page shows no “last updated” date, so check it before you rely on this timeline. Planning around a rule that may or may not arrive is a poor strategy. The hazard is already here.

When do heat deaths actually happen?

Early. Look at what OSHA says about new workers.

The third figure comes from a CDC report on 25 outdoor heat illnesses that OSHA investigated from 2011 to 2016. Of the 14 fatal cases, 11 (78.6%) involved unacclimatized workers, defined as someone who started a new job within two weeks or returned from an absence of more than a week. The authors recommend an acclimatization schedule for new workers and for long-term workers during early-season heat waves. The sample is small, it covers outdoor work in general rather than construction alone, and the authors say they may have misclassified some workers’ acclimatization status.

The practical reading is that your risk is not spread evenly across the season. It concentrates in the first days of a new hire, a rehire, a worker back from vacation, and the first hot week of the year. OSHA’s guidance is the Rule of 20 Percent: new workers do 20 percent of the normal duration on day one and add about 20 percent each day. Some workers may need up to 14 days, and anyone returning after a week or more away needs the same care.

Is heat a productivity and retention problem too?

Yes, and this is the half of the argument that owners tend to skip. A 2024 meta-analysis in BMC Public Health pooled 14 studies covering 2,387 workers and estimated that 60% of construction workers exposed to elevated temperatures experienced significant productivity loss. The loss was more pronounced when the wet bulb globe temperature exceeded 28 degrees Celsius or ambient temperature passed 35 degrees Celsius. That is a pooled estimate across studies, so it describes the research, not your crew. But the direction is not in doubt: a worker fighting the heat is a slower, less careful worker.

Retention is the other cost. In the 2026 AGC and NCCER survey, contractors most often attribute early departures to a mismatch between expectations and the realities of construction work, followed by the physical demands of the job. The survey does not name heat, so treat the link as an inference. But heat is the part of the physical demands a Texas recruit meets first, and it can be described honestly before day one.

Where the law is silent, the jobsite writes the rule, one way or another.

What should a Texas employer’s heat plan include?

Start with the parts OSHA already spells out. Then add the decisions only you can make, such as who has authority to stop work.

Then count what you can. Track heat-related first aid cases, near misses, and how many of them involve workers in their first two weeks. Track no-shows and early quits by start month. If the numbers cluster in the first hot week of summer, you have found your plan’s most important page.

The question that outlasts the rule

Even if OSHA finalizes a heat standard next year, Texas workers will still be standing in the same sun, and the employers who already learned to acclimatize, shade, and speak plainly will be the ones whose crews are still on the roster. So here is the question to take to your next safety meeting: if a new hire collapses on day one, will anyone be able to point to the page that says what you were supposed to do?

If you’re staffing crews for a Texas summer and want people who know what July feels like before they sign, we’d like to hear about the project.